One Life. Kate Grenville
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The only place she could go to be unhappy in peace was the woodheap. She’d sit there in the dusk, the chooks murmuring around her feet. People were always going on about orphans, she thought. How awful it was for them. She thought it would be good to be an orphan. At least you’d have the other orphans. And it wouldn’t be your fault that your parents didn’t love you, because they’d be dead. But why didn’t her parents love her? She knew she must be lovable because Auntie Rose loved her, and Frank loved her, even though they’d lost the knack of talking together. Her parents should love her, because parents were supposed to love their children. Instead, she was nothing but a nuisance to them.
She sat on until the chooks gave up waiting for her and put themselves to bed. There was no reason why anything would ever change. Oh, she thought, all my life is wasted!
When she went to Beckom for the next holiday, Bert and Dolly were packing up again. Off to Sydney, her father said. The Botany View in Newtown. Lowered his voice to what he must have thought was a whisper. Been punished long enough, he said and winked.
Dolly was full of how wonderful the Botany View was going to be. It was near the brickworks, thronged with thirsty workers every lunchtime. No house trade, no night work, easy to run. The place would be a gold mine. It was the same story: this time everything would be perfect.
Oh, what a silly thing I was, Nance thought. Sitting on the woodheap thinking it would be forever!
Then it turned out that Newtown was an unsavoury quarter. Nance would stay on with the Medways. This time she’d be on her own in Temora, because Frank would be boarding at Newington College in Stanmore. Max would go to Newtown Public.
When the school year ended she packed her bag to go home for the Christmas holidays. She went out and waited for Bert on the porch. She was ready too early, Miss Medway kept trying to make her come in out of the heat, but she perched on her case watching down the road. And there he was, a big man in a suit she’d never seen before, his familiar face, and the voice she knew. Well, there you are, Nance! His hand on the gate, his smile turned up to her. Something opened in her and the pent-up tears flooded out.
Oh, things could be so simple! It was nothing more than a matter of Bert saying to Miss Medway, I’ll be taking Nance back with me. That was all it took.
They all looked different, city folk now. Max loved the public school, the kick-about with a ball at lunchtime. The unsavoury quarter business didn’t worry him.
Frank hated Newington. The other boys were snobs, he said. A boy told me I was from the sort of family that had to buy their own silver, he said. Would you know what that meant, Nance?
Of course she didn’t.
Means it’s supposed to have come down in the family, he said. If you have to buy it, you’re not good enough.
Nance didn’t care what Bert and Dolly would do with her. Anything was better than the Medways’. That was until they told her. She was going to a convent in another suburb. She’d be a term boarder there, just come home for the holidays.
She was one of two non-Catholics in her class. In the whole school there were only a dozen. When everyone else did the Legion of Mary the non-Catholics had to do their sampler, and when the rest went away for a week on Retreat they had to stay behind with one of the Sisters. Oh, it was wonderful, the others said when they came back. But you wouldn’t understand.
Nance wished she could be a Catholic. She’d be happy to believe whatever you had to. Imagine, though, going home and telling Dolly! Not that her mother was religious, but if you were a Protestant you didn’t turn.
Up in the dormitory you had to get dressed and undressed under your nightie, otherwise it might be an Occasion of Sin. At the end of the room there was a life-sized statue of Mary holding Baby Jesus. Wherever you stood she was looking somewhere else.
Once a week Sister passed a slate around the class. You were supposed to write down all the good deeds you’d done during the week, but they had to be Catholic things: Holy Mass, Spiritual Communion, Self-Denial. Nance just passed the slate along to the next girl.
Someone had to come to see her every week because her washing was done at home. She supposed it was to save money but it was one more difference that set her apart. Sometimes Frank was sent, stiff in his Newington uniform, embarrassed by the picture of Jesus pointing to a light shining out of his chest. Other times it was Bert. How’s my girl, he boomed, not realising you were supposed to moderate your voice. He always brought the same thing: two bars of Old Gold chocolate.
Dad, I’d rather have milk chocolate, she said, speaking quietly to give him the idea.
What’s that, pet? Oh, that’s all right, Nance, milk next time. But it was always Old Gold, because that was what he liked.
They didn’t often have treats at the convent but one Saturday they were to go to a fete at a nearby school. It was a rare privilege to leave the grounds behind the high walls. The trouble was, the day opened wet and stayed wet and the nuns said they wouldn’t be going if the rain kept up. The girls spent the morning going in and out of the chapel praying for the rain to stop. Even Nance went in with the others, knelt down the way they did and thought, Please, God, let it stop raining.
Lunchtime came and still it rained. See, Nance said to Maureen, next to her at the table. God’s laughing at us.
Maureen said, That’s a wicked sinful thing to say, Nance Russell!
Who cares, Nance said. God’s not doing anything for us, is He?
Then the surprise: at the end of the meal, Sister stood up and announced that they would all put on their galoshes and macs and get out their umbrellas, because they were going to the fete.
Nance wondered why they’d changed their minds. Then she thought, It’s to keep everyone believing. Better to get wet than to grizzle that God didn’t answer our prayers.
Oh, what bliss to walk out the big blue gate and along the road where ordinary bustling life was going on! To know that there was still a world out there, and she’d surely get back to it one day.
She’d been at the convent three terms when Dolly and Bert sold the Botany View. They bought a block of flats in Kings Cross and a house in the southern suburb of Cronulla and retired to live off their rents like gentry. They left Nance at the convent. She went to the Cronulla house for the holidays, but it was hard to enjoy because hanging over every day was the knowledge that soon she’d have to go back behind the hated walls.
She’d become a troublemaker. She made the other girls try to prove that God existed. And if He existed, then why hadn’t He made the rain stop the day of the fete? She scoffed at the miracles in the Bible and laughed at the plaster saints in the chapel. She had a couple of the girls half convinced. Then someone snitched. She had a frightening interview with Mother Superior: the light behind her so she was a dark silhouette. You are doing the Devil’s work, Nance Russell, Mother Superior said. You are sending girls to Hell. God didn’t frighten Nance, but Mother Superior did.
That was a Friday, and the next morning Nance went home for a long weekend. She was still shaky from the interview with Mother Superior. She thought she’d got too tough for tears but she was hollowed out behind her brave front. Once she was home she collapsed. She could hear herself howl, the sort of noise an animal might make. They crowded around, touched her and tried to soothe her. Even Dolly tried to give her a bony hug. At last she told them. Mother